It’s getting difficult to make a case for a hardtail being faster regardless of how skilled/strong you are. Full suspension with lockouts (or FA) seems like the best bet for most even on a non-tech climbing course like Leadville. Sounds like Keegan is leaning toward full suspension this year (unless he’s just playing equipment mind games with the competition). Saw maybe 2-3 hard tails in the top 10 of the stage race, but not many overall. I did see a guy on a fully rigid gravel bike finish with a decent time, he seemed to be having a good time.
Made it to Leadville after leaving Boston yesterday morning - got myself moved in to the AirBnB, and now I’m starting to settle in to that day or two of feeling like I can’t breathe 
I’m actually pretty happy where I ended up on the bars thing - I just bought a second set of 700mm bars, and if I put my palms on my Togs at the inside of my grips, I’m in a relatively comfortable puppy paws ish position. And, no control or performance loss for me - food for thought…
First ride for me tomorrow, but recovery pace. Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll get out and get some Z2 and then a little work in. First bigger ride will be Friday though.
Anyone have a link to a strava or other route to send to my garmin for downtown leadville to the bottom of powerline and back? I tried to search strava but am terrible at it.
Edit: found one thanks!
Hey all…I’m looking for a good printable pacing schedule for 11 hours. Anyone have one?
This is from a trainer road podcast.
I do think that they are a little too conservative through the first Twin Lakes aid station though. I’ve only looked closely at the 9 hour times but I haven’t seen anyone break 9:00 that was even close to 3:09 at Twin Lakes.
And now looking at it more closely, their times then from Twin Lakes to the top of Columbine are completely unreasonable and ridiculously fast. I wouldn’t recommend using these now.
Final edit: Sorry for the worthless post! Looking at comments to the podcast, everyone agrees that the timing sheets are off and not a good pacing plan.
For what it’s worth, I might be a little crazy but I looked over many many of the splits for finishers at my goal time up to 30 minutes faster and focused on the times where people moved up slightly position wise throughout the day. I then also Strava stalked them further to get ideas on the big climbs, mostly Kevin’s and columbine.
Awesome, thank you!
I wish they could compile and present the raw data averages for finishers at different times, and perhaps average times for different segments. With all their data, you would think this would be possible.
Similarly, if any of you are computer savvy and can figure out how to scrape athlinks data, that could be cool. I tried before and quickly became overwhelmed.
For anyone who road in 2024, how was twin lakes alternate for your crews? Wondering if parking/setup was harder with the changes. My wife is going to be at either twin lakes or alternate and originally was going to have her do Twin lakes via shuttle but I wonder if driving to alternate will be easier for her and easier for us to spot each other.
Not sure if this helps, but it worked well in 2021. My crew had to walk a fair distance, but I did not get the impression that it was too bad. Not sure if they have changed it since then?
I find Strava stalking more useful than looking at athlinks. Just find ~10 riders of similar weight and pace that have real (not estimated) power. What’s nice about Strava is that you can look at real data, not just time splits. Looking at athlinks, you can’t tell if someone burned a bunch of time at aid stations or had a mechanical, but that stuff is easy to see in Strava. There was a guy that did a bunch of analysis on Leadville times vs qualifiers and they talked about it on the Leadville podcast series, but you’d have to dig that up and I personally prefer the Strava approach. Sure, it’s a couple hours of time to pull it together, but the data is relevant to your weight and power and you can dissect the course segment by segment to figure out pacing.
I’m more concerned that it’ll be busier now that they’re restricting Twin lakes/using shuttles
We used alternate for the first time last year. My crew headed out from start line at 6:35 and it was a long walk from where she had to park. Not a deal killer, but I’d just plan on hiking a long way if trying to catch start. We use a folding wagon to make it doable.
I’ll have to look into this. I’ve never done this sort of Strava searching. Didn’t realize you could sort by weight, but maybe you are going off segment leaderboards by weight?
Admittedly, I haven’t looked to see what changes they have made in this regard, so thanks for the tip. Perhaps I should review the athlete guide…
Yes, use the leaderboards to filter on weight range and then drill into the details of the entire ride they did that day (obviously just looking at race days and ignoring others). It can be tedious finding a good sample of riders this way, but the data is easy to pull together in a spreadsheet once you’ve identified the riders.
Looks directionally reasonable. I’d pace an 8:30 finish a bit more aggressive in the front half (hitting the turn around by 4:30), but pacing is an individual thing. BBS is reasonably close for me, but isn’t accounting for differences in draft dynamics depending on what groups you are with (it can make sense to burn some matches early to catch a faster train out to columbine).
There is an app for Garmin called Race Notes and Race Notes 2 that you can add your pacing chart too. Depends which Garmin you have as to how useable it is but you should be able to read it. My pacing chart and fueling screens are below. The pacing chart also shows the time and distance so useful for comparing.
Thought it might be useful for some people
Has everyone made their final decision on what tires to run? I went Aspen 29x2.40WT - MaxxSpeed, EXO, E25 on front and Race King ProTection 2.2 on rear last year. Switched to Aspen Front and Rear for the Silver Rush (felt the rear Race King slipping a ton on loose climbs during a pre-ride), and am now thinking I’d do well to go back to having a Race King rear, or Race King Front & Rear.
I had some sketchy rear grip with my dubnitals when i prerode the first half of the course a few weeks ago during an afternoon rain shower. I’m likely gonna roll with peyotes because they are a tiny bit grippier in the wet without much of a penalty on the rest of the course. You always gotta be ready for an afternoon sprinkle in the rockies…
Running the Dubnitals but feel the Race Kings are faster. Wish I was good enough to ride the Thunderburts